Posted on 07/02/2002 12:40:06 PM PDT by What Is Ain't
eading the New York Times coverage of the school-choice decision, I noticed something striking, and fortuitous. Recall, first, a couple of facts: that the teachers’ unions, leftists, and Democrats generally continually portray the school-choice movement as “far right”; and that increasingly important to that movement are black activists, particularly single moms. This embarrasses the Democrats — or should.
So, on one page of Friday’s Times, there was this (fairly typical) quote from Bruce Reed, president of the Democratic Leadership Council: “This decision is going to make it impossible for President Bush to hold off the far right any longer.” And on the back of that page, there was an arresting photo, of two black women from Cleveland Parents for School Choice, upon hearing the news of the Court’s decision, their faces jubilant, their arms outstretched, about to embrace each other in celebration.
And I thought: “Yeah, bub. That’s the face of the ‘far right,’ all right. If that’s what the far right looks like — the far right has certainly changed.”
But, of course, that’s not what the far right looks like, because the far right has nothing — nothing whatsoever — to do with the school-choice movement, which is, among other things, a civil-rights movement (if you consider freedom from inferior, damaging monopolistic education a civil right).
It would behoove the Bush administration to be very, very active on this front. What an opening! A point on which the Democrats are extremely vulnerable. It is said — correctly — that the party is owned by trial lawyers; it is equally owned — co-owned, you might say — by the teachers’ unions. As Republican strategists have often remarked, there are more parents than there are teachers: and there are many teachers who depart from their unions’ line, embarrassed. The Left will always portray the school-choice movement as a project of the Far Right — rather in the same way that Castro and his apologists smear democratic dissidents as “Batista stooges” (in which case they’d be gettin’ pretty old) or CIA agents. The truth of the matter must be ignored or subverted at all costs.
And Democrats should tremble at the idea of being on the other side of black interests. Central to their pride is the fiction that they, uniquely, look out for black Americans; that their role in life is to protect black America from Republican Racism. And here they are, standing at the schoolhouse door, in the manner of George Wallace, only this time preventing students from leaving, rather than getting in.
Bruce Reed, I might mention, is supposed to be the voice of New Democracy, of anti-leftist Democratic moderation, as head of the DLC. It was he, I believe, who wrote those New Democratic speeches for Bill Clinton, in the 1991-92 primary campaign (the ideas from which were quickly jettisoned by Clinton once he became president). Except in rare instances, Clinton stopped being a DLC-er. Has the DLC stopped being DLC-ish? What is its reason for being, anyway?
President Bush has an ideal opportunity to appeal to black Americans, something Republicans are always trying to do, futilely. He can go over the heads of their masters to make plain the logic, desirability, and even morality of school choice. He can press school choice as a new civil right. We spend days, years — movies, documentaries, books, tributes — talking about the Montgomery bus boycott, Selma, Birmingham, etc. Ad nauseam. How ’bout a little attention to the problems of today? How about jumping ahead a half-century or so? How about doing the work that is given to this generation to do? Memorials and reminiscences are fine; but I wonder whether we have the luxury.
With school choice, Bush can a) embarrass and vex the Democrats, b) gain the ear, and perhaps the hearts and votes, of black Americans, and c) get behind one of the most important and powerful reforms of these times.
But the president would have to be interested. He’d have to want some kind of domestic agenda. He’d have to remember what kind of candidate he was, in 2000. He’d have to be the reform president he promised to be, and gave every indication he would be. Look, we all know there’s a war on — but other aspects of life don’t stop.
I will say once more: It was as though Providence dropped that photo in our laps, contradicting and rebuking that dumb quote about the “far right” on the preceding page.
Interested in another dumb quote? I got a million (and not only the ones that originate with me). As you know, the North Carolina Senate race is shaping up to be a celebrity race, pitting the Democrat Erskine Bowles against the Republican Elizabeth Dole. They are competing to replace Jesse Helms (though “replace,” in that instance, should surely be in quotation marks).
Bowles, remember, was Bill Clinton’s chief of staff, not least during the Monica mess. Naturally, Republicans want to hang Clinton and that scandal — Clintonness — around Bowles’s neck. But, to any question about the president he served, Bowles has a stock reply: “Nobody was tougher on the president than I was, publicly and privately at the time. What he did in his personal life was just plain wrong. . . .”
I am not paraphrasing Bowles, incidentally; that’s precisely what he says, as quoted in a story by David E. Rosenbaum in the Times.
Let’s think about this breathtaking statement for a second: “Nobody was tougher on the president than I was, publicly and privately at the time.” This is a lie in so many ways, it makes the head spin. First of all, it’s not true that no one was tougher on the president publicly, because, to name one person, I was — and I bet you were, too! Second, I doubt very much that Bowles was tough on the president at all, publicly. How could he have been? He was the man’s chief of staff, for heaven’s sake! The entire Democratic party circled the wagons around Clinton as tight as a drum (if such mixed imagery can be tolerated). The White House staff was particularly tight, and why not?
Then there’s the assertion that “nobody” was “tougher” privately. You can be forgiven for having grave doubts. Of course, we can’t prove that Erskine Bowles wasn’t “tough” on Clinton privately. (I suppose it’s even true that we can’t prove that Erskine Bowles wasn’t the toughest person in all the world on Clinton, privately.) But . . .
And you will have noted that admission about what the president “did” in his “personal life.” This is the line that Clintonites cling to, for dear life. It’s what allows them to get up in the morning, I suppose — to go on television, to pontificate, to moralize. To continue to be participants in public affairs.
A president uses a 21-year-old intern for sex in the Oval Office? Personal. He lies under oath about it? Personal. He suborns perjury regarding it? Personal. He abuses power for the sake of this lie? Personal. He obstructs justice for the sake of it? Personal. He sells his lie to the public, dramatically, finger-waggingly — “Now, I want you to listen to me” — having rehearsed the lie (yes, he actually rehearsed it) with the professional Hollywood producer Harry Thomason?
Strictly personal.
The Clintonites, among others, instruct us to “move on.” I say, a comprehension and acknowledgement of reality ought to precede moving on.
Here’s an interesting question. It occurred to me in light of the recent Pledge of Allegiance decision in San Francisco. Should a president encourage civil disobedience? Should he say, “The law [or a ruling of the Ninth Circuit] is an ass, and Americans should feel free to ignore it, to violate it”?
I suppose that a president shouldn’t encourage civil disobedience, if civil disobedience this be. But he might wink at it.
At least, that’s what I’d do, if I were president. (How’s that for a clause to set hearts racing?)
I have a couple of vignettes from Racial America, if you can stand it.
I’m in my local Eddie Bauer, lined up to buy some shorts. (The size is a National Review national-security secret.) At the register ahead of me is a middle-aged black woman, returning some garment. She is attempting to do so without a receipt. She is imperious, indignant, accusatory. It’s obvious that she thinks this is Racial, or that she intends to make it so. In short, she’s ready to rumble — got her game-face on.
Behind the counter is some poor, skinny Chinese kid, probably on the job two days, trying to follow the rules. He explains that you need a receipt in order to return an item; otherwise, you can exchange it. Oh, no. The woman pours it on, fuming, bullying. The kid gets on the horn to his manager, somewhere in the basement or something. He mumbles a few nervous sentences. The woman glares, disbelieving (or mock disbelieving), hands on hips. We are on the threshold of an Incident.
Eventually, the unseen manager, and as a consequence his charge, relent. But obviously the manager has instructed the kid to say, “We’re happy to accept the item this time, but from now on, a receipt really is required in order to return an item” — which he does.
That tears it. The woman, in full Maya Angelou/Toni Morrison/Earth Mother/Defender of Justice mode, commences to speechifying, informing the boy that he has “disrespected” her and that his last comment “wasn’t necessary” and that she is a “member of the community” and that perhaps he needs some sensitivity training (is the implication), etc.
And the kid just cringes, helpless.
My dominant thought was: “This poor Chinese s.o.b.: having to bear the entire burden of ‘Four Hundred Years of History,’ as they say, on his skinny little shoulders. All he did was get a job at Eddie Bauer. And now he’s on the snarled-at end of someone who wants to play Rosa Parks, falsely. In America, a store return policy is not a store return policy. It’s a racial forum.”
We might say that our country will have achieved a new freedom, a new harmony, a new maturity when it’s universally understood that Eddie Bauer is Eddie Bauer, for everybody — with no racial poison whatsoever.
Okay, here’s the second vignette, and the final one (you’ll be happy to know):
OLD FRIEND: I like living in Chicago. I like a racial variety. I don’t like northern Michigan [where we’d gone to school]. Too many white people. Everybody’s the same. Don’t you agree?
ME: Well, yes, in a way. No one appreciates the diversity of man more than I. But I don’t really care what color people are. I don’t pay too much attention to race, or don’t want to. I sort of accept people for what they are, skin color aside.
FRIEND is flummoxed. This is the wrong answer. He, the liberal, is supposed to be the one who doesn’t care about race — and yet, of course, he does, passionately.
ME: Besides which, I don’t accept that people are the same just because they happen to share the same pigmentation. For example, you and I are quite different, though we’re both white. And think of the huge diversity among our classmates [white though they may be]. We have all kinds. Skin color, certainly in these cases, is merely superficial. Just as you can’t judge a book by its cover, you really can’t judge people by race.
FRIEND sputters and gulps. The conversation is not turning out the way it’s meant to. And the question is raised — as it so often is — Who’s the real liberal here?
I see an ad for Roger Rosenblatt’s new book, titled Where We Stand: 30 Reasons for Loving Our Country. The ad highlights an endorsement from the Los Angeles Times, in big, bold print, saying, “Roger Rosenblatt’s patriotism is not for [of?] the blindly flag-waving variety. It’s nuanced, complex and, oddly enough, funny.”
Of course it’s not “blindly flag-waving.” Only the patriotism of the likes of us is blindly flag-waving, don’t you know? The patriotism of a sophisticated non-boob like Roger Rosenblatt is bound to be nuanced!
Even now, folks — after Sept. 11, when “everything” was supposed to have “changed” — you can’t sell a book about patriotism, about love of country, without immediately, prominently, and loudly distancing yourself from . . . well, you know: the stupidly-patriotic-even-on-9/10 horde.
Incidentally, do you know anyone whose patriotism is “blindly flag-waving”? I’m not going to take long to consider the question, but, having thought about it for a few seconds, I honestly don’t believe I do.
I’ll end with a little language. As I see it, we have too few hyphens about. I guess I’m now used to “postwar,” although I still blink at the word sometimes, before realizing that it’s “post-war.” And I think “anti” should carry a hyphen, almost everywhere: The words “antiabortion” and “antiracism,” for example, look absurd to me.
But how ’bout this? I was reading a book review that contained the sentence, “ . . . the role of explorers in transporting nonnative foods to new lands . . .” I didn’t know that word “nonnative” — odd that I hadn’t run across it before. I read the sentence a couple of times: and only then realized that the word was non-native. “Nonnative” looked like a word to be pronounced along the lines of “formative.” “Nonnative,” in fact, seemed like a word designating a part of speech!
A sensible rule, I believe, is: If a hyphen contributes to ease of reading — to instant comprehension and non-confusion — use it. I don’t care what the mod dictionaries say, sandwiching everything together.
So, till next time: good-bye. (Just kidding.)
The Berlin Wall was basically built for the same purpose.
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